One of the best RPG campaigns I ever ran (IMHO) kind of happened out of the blue, and started one chilly November evening after a day when bulk bags of candy went on sale at a deep discount in all the stores and the bats and pumpkins were being taken down in all the elementary schools and replaced with hand turkeys and pilgrim hats.
As longtime followers of this blog may recall, I have this thing I've often run on Halloween called the Creepy Crawl. It's essentially old school D&D with an old school (think Universal & Hammer studios) horror movie twist. I have custom classes replacing the bog standard dwarves, elves, and halflings, and overall it's more creepy, kooky, ookey, and spooky than normal. Such as normal is in D&D…
Here are some prior posts for background's sake:
Creepy Crawl 2009
Creepy Crawl 2010 & Anaylsis
Son of Creepy Crawl 2010 & Analysis
Creepy Crawl 2011
After having relocated from Boston to Pittsburgh and secured a job, I eventually recruited a body of co-workers to give my grisly little game a try one evening shortly on the heels of All Hallows Eve. (This was a tech company, and I was in the software department as a graphic artist and UI designer. Naturally, there were many there who were "of the tribe" if you know what I mean, and if you're reading this you probably do.)
Well, they really enjoyed it, and wanted to keep playing. So we decided to try running an hour long game at lunchtime a couple times a week. What blossomed thereafter was a freakishly freeform fantasia of wonderful weirdness, sandwiched in between getting food and getting back to work. I was usually flying by the seat of my pants, because once I ran thru my original event material I had to continue filling in this weird, kinda gothic, kinda schlocky, kinda old school sandbox style game.
Following each session, I'd punch out a quick email updating the players and letting them know where things stood. Recently I was discussing play reports with my incomparable compadre Delta, and for a long time I've wanted to show off the magnificent bizarreness of the Creepy Campaign, so I'm gonna start reposting those update emails here on this blog as kind of a regular series. Should be worth a couple laffs, at least. I know it's early Spring right now and Halloween is months away, but since when does the calendar dictate when I have to be spooky?
These emails will be presented as they went out on the company email system, although the names, dates, and location have been edited to protect the guilty. Do not adjust your set. Any shivers going up your spine are between you and your chiropractor.
Enjoy
Creepy Crawl - Invitation
I’ll be running a grisly little something I like to call the “Creepy Crawl” on Friday night, starting at 6:00 PM and going ‘til 9:00 or whenever. Monsters will be mashed, characters will be mangled, crypts will be looted, and a good time will be had by all.
Feel free to let anybody else at (Redacted) know if they might be interested.
Creepy Crawl - Session I
I’d call Friday’s Creepy Crawl a rousing success.
If you guys would like to continue exploring the catacombs, we could make this a more regular thing. Of course timing, as always, is an issue, so here are a couple of suggestions:
1: We could do a monthly Friday night session, that would run kind of like it ran last Friday (Start at 6 pm, go ‘til 9-10 as desired)
2: We could play hour long sessions over lunch. This would necessitate participants packing/getting takeout. We could be flexible with frequency. It could be a daily thing, or we could do it MWF or on Tuesday/Thursday or one day a week or whatever. I can run this rather light, with just pencils, paper, and dice, which makes it easy to set up and get rolling, as well as knock off fairly quickly.
3: If there were enough interest, we could do a weekly game, but I’d probably prefer a Thursday night for that, and it’d only be for 2-3 hours tops.
I’m amenable to whatever, so let me know if there’s interest. I’ll still occasionally pull together a convention style one shot of whatever whenever the mood and inclination strikes.
So here’s the totals for what your gruesome gang of goons have acquired so far:
Monsters mashed:
Werewolf – stabbed repeatedly in face with silver dagger, bludgeoned with silver teapot, and head exploded with magic missile
Werewolf – ran off after being goosed with wolfsbane.
5 rat creatures – stabbed, arrowed, speared, javelined and bisected.
XP AWARD: 740 xp
Loot grabbed:
40 Gold Pieces
Necklace of ceramic beads and river pearls. (50 GP)
Silver Tea Pot (Partially crumpled) (10 GP)
XP AWARD: 100 xp
Total XP Award: 840 xp / 4 Party Members = 210 xp each.
Assorted gear picked up:
3 Magical Crossbow bolts (+1 to Hit)
1 Spear
1 Crossbow + 20 Bolts
2 Hand Axes
2 Carving Knives
A good haul, all told.
Your Dungeon Master is pleased.
Stay tuned for more, boils and ghouls...
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